Countess. What can this mean, this ecstacy of passion!
Can such reluctance, such emotions, spring
From the mere nicety of maiden fear?
The source is in her heart; I dread to trace it,
Must then a parent's mild authority
Be turn'd a cruel engine, to inflict
Wounds on the gentle bosom of my child?
And am I doom'd to register each day
But by some new distraction?—Edmund! Edmund!
In apprehending worse even than thy loss,